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Issues Facing
Missions Today 29: What is Biblical Marriage?Introduction: Reflection on the creation
stories of Genesis 1.1-2.3 and 2.4-25—which are, of course, intended to be read
together—helps us to understand a Biblical view of marriage. Three key aspects of marriage emerge
from the stories. Marriage
is between complementary beings of the same human species that form a permanent
union: male and female. Marriage
is for the purpose of procreation and flourishing within creation. And marriage involves the
responsibility of exercising authority within the order of creation. Each of these points can be explored
with reference to the understanding of being created in God’s image in Gen.
1.26ff. Moreover, in light
of the cultural confusion regarding marriage in Western countries, that
marriage so understood cannot apply to homosexual unions any more than sexual
unions between humans and animals is a clear corollary of what is stated in the
Biblical account of creation. Yet, to claim that m…

Issues Facing Missions Today 28: Three
Models for MinistryIntroduction Part
of my role in ministry, which especially includes theological education and
involvement with mission groups, has entailed figuring out how to minister
through an intentional community of disciples of Jesus Christ. This has been a life-long pursuit, and I’m
fully aware of the challenges this side of Paradise! In this brief blog post, I would like to
highlight several distinctions that might help others—including myself and my
colleagues. This is not formal research,
and it is not much based on some body of literature. It is mainly born out of my own experience
and thoughts. I
would like to frame these thoughts around a distinction I first came across decades
ago in Edward LeRoy Long, Jr.’s A Survey
of Recent Christian Ethics.[1] Long suggests that there are three ways in
which to consider and pursue moral change: the institutional, operational, and
intentional community. I have found
these useful when consi…

Issues Facing Missions Today 27: What Does the Quran Say
about Treatment of Jews and Christians? The Quran seems to offer different advice on what to do with
persons of other faiths. Those of us
accustomed to reading ancient texts know that there are legitimate issues of interpretation
that need to be considered. At times,
such issues lead us to a different understanding of texts that, on first reading,
appear to be saying something else.
There are, for example, issues of translation (and Muslims insist that
the Quran cannot accurately be translated from Arabic), the importance of the
original context, a possible trajectory of meaning of some sort (such as when the
holy war narratives in the Old Testament give way to the pacifism of the early
Church due to the teaching and example of Jesus Christ in the New Testament),
matters of rhetoric (is extreme language actually hyperbole and not to be taken
literally?), and so forth. Thus, the following
identification of texts is mainly offe…